Daphne 2.I

I decided to once again post from the perspective of Daphne.  This is actually the very beginning of what I propose to be my book, so I should doubly hope that it is of good quality.  Let me know.  And as always, enjoy.

They were going to be late. It seemed to bother her husband, Aelestros, but she had no such misconceptions. They were going to arrive exactly when they arrived, and there was nothing that could be done to avert this. She just couldn't understand anything otherwise. He had been irritated and unwilling to talk to her for a bit, but she knew that he’d get over it soon enough. He couldn't help but talk, so staying quiet was just as hard as it was for him to stay mad at her, she knew. He’d waited for half a day for her to finish working on an artistic project that she had set herself to, coming in to remind her quite often that they needed to leave. She confidently assured him every time that she was almost done, and every time he believed her. To be fair, I was telling to the truth, but every time I got to a stopping point, I saw one more thing that I had to do. And then again this morning; unavoidable.

They were riding from their country villa which they lived at to the city of Errama, the City, where they were visiting friends. The night before they’d stayed at an inn along the road, but today they’d be in the city; they weren't too far away, so it wasn't too hard to go and visit their friends. It was just the two of them, but of course they both had to bring their personal slaves, and they brought another couple of slaves along for protection, just in case. The beautiful thing about the Erraman domination of the Ravennas peninsula is that all the roads were brilliant, and they were safe to travel from the straights of Duraculis to Taratas and even into Molosseiros without fear of being waylaid by brigands, but even so, it never hurt to take the extra precautions, just in case some slaves happened to have escaped and were looking for easy targets, or were desperate and saw horses by which they could flee more quickly with. That and wolves.

Her husband interrupted her perhaps paranoid thoughts by pointing off towards the wood line and calling out in a whispered tone to her, “Look at that, do you know what that is?”